Pulp

Pulp was one of the great britpop bands of the nineties, but telling their story only as "a britpop band" falls short.

They were, above all, the vehicle for Jarvis Cocker, one of the best lyricists British music has produced: a skinny guy with thick-rimmed glasses and odd movements, who turned songs into razor-sharp short stories about sex, shame, desire and, above all, social class.

While Blur and Oasis fought over the britpop throne, there were people who said the right answer to "Blur or Oasis?" was, simply, "Pulp".

Because Pulp had something the others did not: an intelligence and a way of looking at real life that nobody matched.

Sixteen years to become an overnight success

The story of Pulp is a lesson in perseverance.

Jarvis Cocker formed the band with Peter Dalton in Sheffield, a working-class city in the north of England, in November 1978. He had just turned fifteen, and the group was called Arabicus Pulp, a name that came from the commodities index of the Financial Times: the arabica coffee bean.

And then came the most incredible part. They spent sixteen years playing, changing line-ups, releasing records almost nobody bought, failing again and again, without giving up.

Sixteen years in the shadows, until in 1994 "His 'n' Hers" reached number nine in Britain and somebody finally looked at them.

When the big success arrived, the following year, the press talked about them as "the new sensation", not knowing that behind it lay almost two decades of stubbornness. Cocker was thirty-one when "Common People" came out.

And that long road was precisely what made them so good: when the spotlight finally reached them, they had an enormous amount to say.

The sharpest anthem about social class

Their biggest song, "Common People", is one of the best British pop ever produced and one of the most intelligent ever written about class difference.

The story it tells is real. At Saint Martins art school, around 1988, Cocker met a classmate from a well-off family, a sculpture student, who told him she wanted to live like common people, poor, to experience it, the way you try out a fashion.

Out of that arrogance the song was born: a fierce, danceable portrait of rich people who play at being poor for fun, knowing that at any moment they can call daddy and go back to their comfortable life, while for real common people poverty is not a game you can walk out of.

It is class rage disguised as a party anthem.

It is worth saying that almost nothing is known about that girl, and he is the first to admit it: he has almost always described her as Greek, but he has also said that maybe he misunderstood her, and about her name he has been categorical: he does not know what she is called. Every so often the press proposes a candidate and he denies it.

The album that contained it was called, quite deliberately, "Different Class": "a different class" and "a cut above" at the same time. Cocker took the expression from a friend at a club in London. And the sleeve notes round off the idea: we do not want trouble, we just want the right to be different.

It came out on 30 October 1995, went to number one, and won the Mercury Prize the following year, in September 1996, ahead of Oasis.

Cocker collected the prize and right there, on stage, handed it over to Brian Eno for a charity project that was competing on the same shortlist.

Glastonbury, with no hotel

And there is one night that sealed it all.

In June 1995, The Stone Roses had to cancel their appearance at Glastonbury because their guitarist broke his collarbone in a bicycle accident. They gave about ten days' notice.

Pulp replaced them. When they arrived there were no hotels left for miles around, so the band bought tents.

On Saturday 24 June, at nine at night, they played "Common People" on the main stage to a crowd that knew every word of it.

From then on they were no longer the same old band.

The poet of ordinary life

And there lies the heart of what made Pulp great: Jarvis Cocker wrote about what nobody else dared put in a song.

Not about great idealised loves, but about real life, uncomfortable and true: the clumsiness of teenage sex, humiliation, unrequited desire, envy, the shame of being poor, the distance between what we dream of and what we get.

His songs are like short stories, with characters, with precise details, with humour and melancholy at once.

"Disco 2000" is dedicated to a real person: Deborah Bone, a childhood friend of Cocker's. Their mothers knew each other and the two of them were born in the same hospital a few hours apart. Bone became a mental health nurse and founded a care service for teenagers. In 2013, Cocker sang "Disco 2000" to her at her fiftieth birthday party.

She died the following year, of a myeloma, hours before it was announced that the queen had honoured her for her work.

Cocker looked at the ordinary life of the British working class and found there the poetry, the comedy and the tragedy that others went looking for in more grandiose things. That is why he is considered one of the best lyricists of his generation: he did not invent worlds, he lit up ours.

The ones who do not fit

There is a detail in his life that says a lot about him.

As a child he survived meningitis, and for years it was taken for granted that this was the origin of his poor eyesight and those thick glasses that became part of his image. He himself later qualified that version, in his memoir.

At the age of seven or eight his mother sent him to school in a pair of German leather shorts that some relatives had given him. He told it like this: he went to school looking like an extra from Heidi.

Cocker was, from childhood, the odd one, the gangly one, the one who did not fit in. And instead of hiding it, he made it his flag.

"Mis-Shapes" is a call for the odd ones to unite and take over the world, and even the title is a class joke: in England that was the name for the defective chocolates that were sold cheap, the ones his mother used to buy.

Like Weezer or Placebo, Pulp spoke to those who did not fit in, but with a very British elegance and irony.

What to remember

Pulp is the proof that intelligence and the observation of real life can be as powerful as any star pose, and that sixteen years of stubborn perseverance can be worth it.

And the story went on: in June 2025, with "More", they reached number one in Britain for the first time in twenty-seven years.

If you put on "Common People", "Disco 2000", "Babies" or "Something Changed", you are going to hear British pop of the wittiest kind: danceable songs that are, if you pay attention to them, razor-sharp portraits of life, sex, class and desire, sung by a guy who made an art out of not fitting in.

Jarvis Cocker spent two decades being ignored and one being famous, and handled both with more intelligence than almost anyone.

Listen to them, and you will understand why, when someone asks "Blur or Oasis?", there are people who smile and answer: "Pulp".

Sources

Pulp, British band formed in Sheffield in November 1978 by Jarvis Cocker —who had turned fifteen that September— and Peter Dalton, under the name Arabicus Pulp, taken from the commodities index of the Financial Times. A central figure of nineties britpop. After sixteen years of little success and numerous line-up changes, "His 'n' Hers" (1994) reached number nine in Britain, their first charting album, and massive success came the following year. "Different Class" was released on 30 October 1995, reached number one on the UK Albums Chart, went four times platinum and won the Mercury Prize at the ceremony of 10 September 1996 —not in 1995, the year it was won by Portishead with "Dummy"—, ahead of Oasis, Manic Street Preachers, Black Grape and Underworld; Cocker handed the prize over on the spot to Brian Eno and Tony Crean for the charity project "Help", by War Child. The album title plays on the British double meaning of "of a different class" and "a cut above". "Common People" (22 May 1995, number two in the United Kingdom) was inspired by a well-off classmate Cocker met around 1988 at Saint Martins, a sculpture student, who expressed her wish to "live like common people"; Cocker has usually described her as Greek, qualifying that he may have misunderstood her, and has stated that he does not know her name, denying the identifications proposed by the press. At Glastonbury 1995 Pulp replaced The Stone Roses, who cancelled after John Squire broke his collarbone in a mountain biking accident; the replacement was announced about ten days beforehand and they played on Saturday 24 June at 21:00 on the Pyramid Stage. "Disco 2000" was inspired by Deborah Bone (10 January 1963 – 30 December 2014), a childhood friend of Cocker's born in the same hospital a few hours apart, a mental health nurse and founder of the Step2 service; Cocker sang the song to her at her fiftieth birthday party in 2013, and Bone died of multiple myeloma hours before the announcement of her appointment as MBE. "Mis-Shapes", released as a double A-side with "Sorted for E's & Wizz" on 25 September 1995, reached number two; its title alludes to the defective chocolates that were sold at a low price. About the meningitis he suffered as a child and its relationship with his poor eyesight, a version repeated for years by the press, Cocker himself qualified the causal link in his memoir "Good Pop, Bad Pop" (2022). After "This Is Hardcore" (1998) and "We Love Life" (2001) the band went on hiatus and Cocker began a solo career; they have reunited on various occasions, and their album "More" reached number one in Britain in June 2025, twenty-seven years after the previous one. Externally authored text, edited and verified for Rebobinados. Interpretations of the meaning of their work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Wikipedia, Rolling Stone, The Guardian, Far Out, The Sheffield Magazine and other press coverage.